And the move to social media and social networking is another area where building it doesn't necessarily guarantee that anyone will come to read, view, tweet, friend or fan you.

Bottom line is to know your customer and know the profitability of each channel. The customer is multi-channel and some channels actually commoditize your product offering (can you say Online?), so be cautious about being wooed to shift business to somehow get more "control" of the customer relationship.